How agentic AI works behind the scenes to find the answers you need
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How are AI agents creating magical, accurate conversations?
With the advancement in technology in the last few years, I think we're getting closer and closer to a place where AI can actually internalize what you are trying to do and then help you in that goal. And I think once you get to that point, then it'll be a very delightful experience for all the users. Typically, these innovations happen over years and decades. But all that is compressed into spans of months. So that's why I call it amorphous to some extent, because there is no playbook.
Until a few years ago, the idea that you would chat with your phone or your laptop as if you were talking to another person, like, you know, going back and forth, having a full-blown conversation, that was mostly the stuff of science fiction. Then ChatGPT comes along and, well, you know the rest. For an increasing number of people, chat is becoming this primary interface for getting stuff done, right up there with a mouse and keyboard. Take Dropbox, for example, which uses AI to put all your company's content and knowledge right at your fingertips. Say you want to understand a dense legal document, find some misplaced photo, or get a summary of everything your team has been working on this week.
All you have to do is ask. And interface, I think, is actually a pretty good word for what's happening here. Because unlike a conversation with an actual person, the chatbot is really just a front for all these different helpers or AI agents that work together behind the scenes to get you what you need.
My name is Jeongmin Baek, and I'm a principal machine learning engineer at Dropbox. So my team and the teams I work with are responsible for building the agents that PowerDash. So these are the chat agents that you talk to that might compose messages for you or do research into various systems that are connected to it.
Or, and this is a big one, the ability to search all your stuff, no matter where it might be stored.
A lot of the value that Dropbox provides through Dash is that all your data is there. So whether you have files that live in Dropbox or, you know, other cloud stories that you have connected to, Dropbox and Dash can connect that and then we, you know, process them so that they're made available to the agents as tools.
And that is how Dropbox has been building AI that actually understands your work and the stuff that matters to you. And along with Jongman, one of the people responsible for making that experience the best it can be is Marta Mendez.
I'm a senior machine learning engineer working in Dash Chat. So I actually pivoted careers, like my background was on telecommunications engineering and I was working on satellite communications, giving internet to yachts, cruises. I was like, I'm not the user of this. Like we were dealing with captains, right? And I really liked tech. So I was like, I want to build features that I get to use and then that I get to show because it's like so exciting to be able to see your work working for people.
And who among us hasn't had the experience of using an AI assistant that simply will not do what you want it to do, no matter how many different ways you ask?
It's very frustrating to try to work with an LLM when you're like, what I'm describing to you is already reasonable. This is not a hard ask. Why are you just not following my instructions?
So how do you build AI that works for people? It all starts with chat and the AI agents that keep the answers coming. I'm Matthew Braga, and this is Working Smarter, a podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done. Today, I'm talking to Jongmin Baek and Marta Mendez, two Dropbox machine learning engineers about building AI that you actually want to talk to, that's helpful and knowledgeable and knows exactly what you're looking for and understands what you need to get things done. That's coming up next on Working Smarter. Okay, so before you had chatbots and LLMs, if you wanted to find a file or a piece of information to share with a colleague, there was search.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How are AI agents creating magical, accurate conversations?
0:00–4:36
2
Why is chat becoming a primary interface for getting work done?
4:36–7:40
3
What role do hidden AI agents play behind the chatbot interface?
7:40–11:05
4
How does Dropbox’s AI search across all stored content?
11:05–14:23
5
How did Marta transition from telecom to building AI agents at Dropbox?
14:23–18:43
6
Why do AI assistants sometimes ignore user instructions?
18:43–22:28
7
How does conversational search differ from traditional keyword search?
22:28–26:15
8
What happens step‑by‑step when a user asks Dash to find files?
26:15–31:23
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Working Smarter
How the people building AI at Dropbox use AI themselves
Protecting your team’s content, wherever it’s stored—so you can safely use AI
Building AI that can search inside videos (and photos and audio too)
Why don’t more AI tools understand what matters to you?
Coming soon: Working Smarter season three